Twilight In Plain Sight

by Mitch H

The Corpse At Every Funeral

Twilight's eyes darted around the shadowed parking lot, searching for threats, for knives, for cultists waiting for them to find the body, for –

Nothing. She reached behind her, grasping for Skyla.

"Stay right there, and keep an eye behind me, sweetie. Don't go anywhere."

Dusk Shine turned off the flashlight app, and brought up 911 on the phone, scanning her forward arc, keeping an eye on the shadows over by the two passages out of the back of the parking lot – the one leading out onto a well-lit alley, the street-lights showing no shadows of anyone lurking just out of sight; the other the drive-way that wrapped around the back of her apartment, separating their building from the funeral home itself. She couldn't see around corners, damnit.

"Hello, 911?" Dusk tried to force as much of her panic and fear into her voice. This needed to sound authentic. 911 calls were recorded. "I need the police. There's a body here! Ah, yes, 112 Woodsdale Road, the back parking lot."

"No, damnit, this isn't a prank! I'm not talking about a goddamn viewing! There is a man with his throat slit on my Harmony-forsaken front steps! Get the FUCKING COPS HERE! Oh, Skyla, I'm sorry honey, don't look, don't look – get them over here! Old Town, between the alley and the funeral home, yes! Ah, Dusk Shine. I live here, it's my apartment. Uh-huh. Yeah."

Dusk Shine ended the call, and dropped the act.

"Any movement back there, Skyla?"

"We're attracting a couple guys now. Game faces, Mommy."

"Face the garage, I need to take the lead."

Dusk Shine pocketed her phone, passed her mace to her right hand, and pulled Skyla to the left. They rotated ninety degrees, just in time for Dusk to face the Probie as he approached along with two other rough men in leather outlaw drag.

"Dead body!" squeaked Dusk Shine, playing the naïf as hard as she could. "Just called 911! Is he one of yours? No! Don't touch it! Cops will be here – I don't know, how fast do they move around here?"

"It's Old Town, the jail and the courthouse are here. They'll be here in seconds. I don't recognize him." The Probie had an actual steel-case pocket flashlight he was playing over the slumped corpse. "Not a Horseman. That's bad. Dumb Bell, go warn Wind Rider we've got a shit-storm. Mr. Crate – I think we need Thunderlane."

The two looming hulks looked down at the Probie, and Dusk Shine got the distinct impression that they didn't think the younger man had the authority to be ordering them around, but just as they were about to give him what for, a chaos of police lights heralded an imminent deluge of constituted authority over the scene. The older of the two hulks cursed, and grabbed the younger and they both scurried off at a double-step, while the Probie stood to attention and turned to face the oncoming police cars.

Skyla never moved from her post at the small of Dusk Shine's back.

As the police turned their spot-lights on the scene, Dusk Shine put away her mace, and took her phone back out, and hit one of the pre-loaded numbers.

"Hello, Miss Seed? It's Dusk Shine. We have a serious situation here. Yes. Yes. Police matter. There's a body. I'll do my best, yes." The Probie had shot Dusk Shine a look as she chose to make a call rather than engage the oncoming police, but was distracted by the second pair of cops as they tackled him and pushed his face into the asphalt.

Dusk hung up on Poppy Seed as quickly as she could, and turned towards the first pair of cops, one of whom was gawking at the crime scene, and the other of whom was painting the whole of the parking lot with a spastic flashlight, making the shadows dance and flit around like a riot of darkness being hosed down by tear gas.

Skyla had shifted around to Dusk's right, and was hiding her face in the fabric of Dusk's pantsuit jacket. Dusk Shine hugged her daughter tightly into her side and did her best to stay out of the drama. Her civic duty had been completed, and she badly needed to be seen not being involved.

As more and more police swarmed into that increasingly crowded parking lot, she let a female cop and that cop's partner move her and Skyla to a cruiser, where she pushed Skyla deep into the back seat, where they wouldn't be able to talk directly to her daughter. Dusk Shine took their questions, and did her best to limit her responses to head-nods, and brief, thoroughly public-knowledge acknowledgements such as 'that is my apartment' and 'just getting home from dinner' and 'work before that' and 'the elementary school over on Fin Street'.

It took Poppy Seed an hour to appear. As it was, she still beat the crime-scene techs. Dusk Shine had begun to suspect that Dashville didn't have any on the payroll. Especially once she spotted a pair of awkward-looking uniformed cops getting a set of forensic kits out of the back of another cruiser, pulling on their latex gloves.

The deputy marshal sidled up to where Dusk Shine was sitting in the back of the cruiser with her feet on the parking-lot asphalt. The Probie had been hauled away a half-hour ago, and the local cops were mostly just milling about, making a big production out of rolling out the yellow police-tape around the numerous entrances to the parking lot. The funeral home director was arguing loudly with a watch commander over on the far side of the front porch of Dusk Shine's landlady's building. The front porch where the other inhabitants were clustered, gossiping furiously as they stared daggers across the parking lot at Dusk.

Why couldn't we have gotten rooms inside the front half of the building?

"What was the first thing they told you, Miss Shine?"

"Don't come into contact with the police."

"Don't attract the attention of the police, right. Does this look like not attracting attention?"

"I'm trying to stay as far out of the way as I can. Miss Seed, they dropped a body on my stoop."

"They? Who they? Did you see anything?"

"Do I have to see anything? It's a body. On my front steps!"

"Might not be anything to do with you."

"What are the odds of that, I looked up the crime statistics when you all told me where I was going. There hasn't been a murder in this county in five years!"

"Well, no famous ones. You have to check for manslaughter in the stats, Miss Shine. Actually is about two or three a year."

"I'm not talking about bar fights!"

"How do we know this isn't a bar fight?"

"I couldn't even tell you where the nearest bar is from here. Maybe down in the Switching Yards?"

"Good to hear you've been staying away from unsavory elements, Dusk. Oh, well. It's not as bad as it looks."

"It better not be! The school will fire me!"

Poppy Seed smiled down at her charge. "That's good. You're better than I hoped. Keep that up. Offended schoolmarm's a good look. It'll fly. Especially if it turns out to be what you're afraid of."

"If it's what I think it is, you have to move us. How could we be blown already?"

"You can't be, the only way they could have found you already would have been if you had a Crystaller cultist hiding in your rear trunk when you drove out east."

"Beetles have their trunks in the front."

"Don't be pedantic. Unless you killed him yourself, this doesn't have anything to do with you. And we're not moving you. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to move a family?"

"Some idea, yes. And I've spent the last month working like a dog, digging into this town like a tick. All that effort…"

"Don't go looking for trouble, Dusk. If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you."

As they stared at the scene, one such trouble found its ditch, as the watch supervisor hot-footed over to the two uniforms with forensic kits approaching the body. The argument was brief but spectacular, the giddy neighbors, resigned funeral home employees and grim-faced outlaw bikers forming a fascinated if mixed audience. Poppy Seed turned so that she wasn't facing the scene or the crowd of onlookers. At least she hadn't arrived wearing her sunglasses at night this time.

"I don't want to be too obtrusive with all of these curious eyes on us. As far as anyone's concerned, I'm your friend. Your indeterminately professional friend from I don't know – Roanoke?"

"You got here too fast. Abingdon or Bristol."

"Abingdon it is. Lawyer?"

"Do you want to get roped into representing me?"

"True enough. CPA then. If anyone asks who isn't high-ranking police. We're in a city here, by the way. You'll be dealing with city cops."

"No, really?" Dusk Shine looked significantly down at the cruiser, whose doors were prominently emblazoned with the City of Dashville's municipal seal and proclaimed, proudly, DASHVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT – TO PROTECT AND SERVE.

"Yeah, right, OK," Poppy Seed conceded. "How's the kid?"

"Napping. It's been a busy day." Actually, Skyla was faking it, curled up but still vigilant, Dusk Shine could tell. But she didn't want to air family business in front of the bureaucrat.

"Maybe we ought to see if we can't get you a motel room for the night. You won't be getting inside for hours at this rate."

And just as Poppy Seed had started nonchalantly inching towards the watch commander, who was bent over his phone and yelling at someone, the CSI people came trotting around Dusk Shine's cruiser, arms full of equipment, and faces red with embarrassment and exertion. They wore cheap jackets with 'Dashville Police Forensics Unit – Solving Crime Through Science' indifferently printed in large, block letters across their backs.

The watch commander looked like he was about to tear a stripe off of both of the extremely overweight, gormless-looking forensic techs. Eventually the watch commander wound down, and let them do their damn jobs. Poppy Seed had drifted back to stand beside where Dusk Shine sat in the cruiser, and leaned back against the car to watch the dramedy. The deputy marshal was as much a part of the gathered audience at this point as anyone else.

The show went on, as the lab techs struggled into their gloves, and then started taking photographs. Eventually, they waved the two already-gloved uniformed cops to pick up the body, and move it into a body-bag and, presumably, into the gurney two EMTs had unfolded from an ambulance now double-parked in the increasingly crowded street. As the cops turned the body over, Dusk Shine could see the patches on the back of the corpse's riding jacket.

Club de motos Salvajes.

Los Salvajes.

Sombra had used a Salvajes chapter back in Crystal City for muscle. Not for the killings, that had been the cultists, but the street business. And the crystal molly distribution.

Dusk Shine looked up at Poppy Seed. The deputy marshal was no longer looking at the body, she was looking down at Dusk, scanning her face, her expression.

"What? What's the problem now?" asked the deputy marshal. "That's a good thing, isn't it? Last thing we need is the local MC up in arms about another dead biker. That's certainly not the cut of a local gang. Where is Venus, I wonder?"

"Texas," growled an older, male voice from over the deputy marshal's shoulder. Dusk Shine couldn't see who was talking. "About halfway between Waco and Dallas."

Poppy Seed stepped away from the cruiser and turned around, alert and suddenly dangerous. Dusk Shine could see the outlines of Seed's service weapon's holster in the small of her back, the deputy marshal's hand resting with one finger hooked around a belt-loop on her pantsuit near the holster's draw.

After Seed stepped out of the way, Dusk Shine could see the speaker. Tall, fat, black. Big bristling grey beard, bald. Wearing very worn, heavily patched riding leathers.

"Well that sounds specific," said Poppy Seed in a deceptively friendly tone of voice. "You familiar with the area?"

"We're going to be burying my friend's son tomorrow because a fucking Salvaje murdered him down that way last week. And it looks like they're not done fucking with us."

"Well, that doesn't sound great, Mister…?"

"Thunderlane. I'm the Dashville chapter's sergeant at arms. And you smell like a cop. I don't recognize you, you're not with the city. What agency? And can you get me my probationary member back? Some of the local badges decided to arrest Flash Sentry for wearing our colors in the vicinity of a dead body."

Author's Note:

Thanks for editing and pre-reading help with this chapter to Oliver, Shrink Laureate and the general Company.

Comments

[Elsaack]

I'm with Twi- Dusk Shine on this. Safest option is to assume cover is blown and run. Leave figuring out why the possibly Sombra aligned biker turned up dead on her doorstep for when they aren't in the Virginia anymore. Of course if the safest option was taken most stories would never get started, and if Slavajes are active in the area maybe this is just bad luck. Killing an ally to threaten the person you want to kill doesn't seem like the most functional plan.

[Ze1a7in]

So, I think this story's comment section has created a meme for this story. That meme being: when typing the two main characters' names, typing out the first few letters of their actual names, and then correcting ourselves by typing in their cover names.

[Shrink Laureate]

8597407
It might if it was somebody you really wanted rid of - for example, because he's threatening your position or had dirt on you - and his timely death can serve to rally members to some cause.

Or it's a third party that's trying to make the gangs go to war.

[GildedSteel]

I'm thinking this incident is sort of coincidental. There is something else going on, to be sure. If this MC club is active in the area, then coincidence is likely. If they aren't, then there is reason to be highly paranoid. If the real conflict is with the other Biker Gang, then the question is why was Twilight placed in the middle? Are these Horsemen working for anyone more interesting? So much to ponder.

[Misty Spell]

scanning her forward arc

...?

Dusk tried to force as much of her panic and fear into her voice. This needed to sound authentic. 911 calls were recorded.

1) This is an exceptionally scary situation. Unless Twilight is actually fearless, which is a worrying characteristic for a character, it shouldn't be too hard for her to sound scared.
2) Having more panic in her voice won't prevent them from investigating the possibility that she could have done it if that's what she's going for.

There is a man with his throat slit on my Harmony-forsaken front steps!

So what exactly is the belief system here? The usual term would be god forsaken would it not? And this thing is about as Equestria Girls as Skyrim is, so I doubt there's an Equestria connection. Does everyone else believe in this Harmony? Is this something exclusive to the magic users?

Not a Horseman. That's bad. Dumb Bell, go warn Wind Rider we've got a shit-storm. Mr. Crate – I think we need Thunderlane.

Hmm, with all these familiar names I wonder if we'll be meeting the rest of the mane 6 at some point.

making the shadows dance and flit around like a riot of darkness being hosed down by tear gas.

So the darkness was coughing and scattering away from the area?

"Don't attract the attention of the police, right. Does this look like not attracting attention?"

Okay, no. No officer, witness protection program or no, would have a problem with someone calling the police in a situation like this. Either she is literally shit at her job or this is a bad bit of characterization.

the CSI people came trotting around Dusk Shine's cruiser

NCIS > CSI

And the crystal molly distribution.

Of course it's crystal molly 'cuz Sombra and cryyyyyssssstaaaaaalllsssss.

[raven618]

If the stiff is from the Salvajes gang, and they are part of Sombra's organization, why is finding one of their members dead on your doorstep bad? Yes, it does mean they're in the area, but it also means they are at odds with someone else in the area, and the fact that it's Duck's Dusk's home is just a coincidence.

[howard035]

8597472 Or he was killed by someone else and you didn't want to waste the body.
But yeah, generally in biker fiction when a biker turns up dead, it's because a 3rd party is trying to start a war between 2 biker gangs.

[Speedy Silverstreak]

Could I please be a part of this?

[Dorath]

8597621
Yeah, Poppy is coming across more as a self-absorbed, near-useless bureaucrat than an ally. (Seriously, she doesn't know the Salvajes worked for Sombra? That should have been part of her basic briefing on who to keep an eye out for. And she tries to give Twi-Dusk grief for calling the cops over a murdered body on her front steps?! )

The Horsemen, on the other hand, are looking like they have potential (and not just for Twi-Flash shipping ).

[Prismmirror]

Gotta agree with one of the reviews from a previous chapter - this story is good but, aside from the names, it doesn't seem like a crossover. Yes, we can predict the background of the characters a bit better, but it otherwise could be a random aunt and her niece. It feels more like a Dresden Files crossover to me, but that's probably just the blue VW and Twilight making her own magic tools from bits and bobs.

Still a very well written fic, so I am glad you've posted it.

[Ice Star]

To be fair, the corpse of every funeral usually seems pretty comfy. I don't think being one would be half bad.

[Genial Precis]

Dusk Shine ended the call, and dropped the act.

"Any movement back there, Skyla?"

"We're attracting a couple guys now. Game faces, Mommy."

They're practiced at this level of danger. And she even called Twilight Mommy. Or she called Dusk Shine Mommy. I'm not sure how she thought of it.

Skyla never moved from her post at the small of Dusk Shine's back.

Agh, stop breaking my heart with this child-soldier schtick!

Anyway, Poppy Seed doesn't seem fully apprised of the dangers current or potential here. Or sufficiently suspicious. A body on the stoop of your protected witness is probably not a coincidence, however good you think the cover was.

[Skulljack17]

9076229
I mean, all the attention is on you! At least, if you were liked or respected or anything...otherwise they're there to mock you or talk about what you might have left them or stuff. Not that the latter things don't happen anyway, but when it's the main point of discussion then you have to think you may have made some mistakes in who came to see your dead body, or who and how you retained friendships over your life. Food for thought before one dies!

[Genial Precis]

Giving this a reread and

Dusk Shine pocketed her phone, passed her mace to her right hand, and pulled Skyla to the left. They rotated ninety degrees, just in time for Dusk to face the Probie as he approached along with two other rough men in leather outlaw drag.

Skyla never moved from her post at the small of Dusk Shine's back.

Are pretty hard-hitting. Carries a hint of soldiers clearing a room, and the hint is enough to be disturbing because it's a functional resemblance. They move together in specific planned ways because Skyla has specific realistic expectations of how to work with Dusk to avoid being murdered.